Internet protocol packets are statelessly identified as associated with a particular session-instance by identifying a key, or session-instance identifier, within the data (or payload) portion of a user plane packet. This identifier is specific to the session-instance and remains constant throughout the session-instance. Using this stateless identification, transmitted user plane packets are automatically routed at the transmission speed of the transmission link using a method that automatically balances the analysis processing load between network probes. The load is balanced by routing the user plane packet to a network probe that is either already analyzing the session-instance or by routing the user plane packet to a system that has processing capacity to analyze a new session-instance. The network probe then analyzes the user plane packet and the session-instance to measure the quality of the user experience of the session-instance and performance of the network.
Legal claims defining the scope of protection, as filed with the USPTO.
1. A packet flow switch apparatus coupled to a network for monitoring network traffic, comprising: a packet flow switch in communication with a plurality of network probes each configured and operative to generate an ASI data set including key performance indicators and Adaptive Session Records, the packet flow switch configured to receive packets transmitted through a plurality of communication network data links, wherein the packet flow switch is further configured to: determine if a received packet is one of a control plane packet or one of a user plane packet; responsive to determining the received packet is a control plane packet causing the control plane packet to be distributed to each of the plurality of network probes coupled to the flow switch regardless of a session instance the control packet is associated with; responsive to determining the received packet is a user plane packet, determine a packet session-instance the determined user plane packet is associated with regardless of association with a control plane packet; update a session-instance database to include a determined packet session-instance if not already present in the session-instance database; purging a control plane packet from each of the probes it is distributed to contingent upon prescribed criteria; and purging a determined packet session-instance from the session-instance database when a control plane packet associated with the packet session-instance is purged from each of the probes; the packet flow switch comprising; a load balancer configured to automatically select only a first network probe to receive the user plane packets of a determined session-instance transmitted through the plurality of data links with reference to the session-instance database, thereby approximately balancing the processing load of user plane packets between the plurality of network probes; and a switch to route user-plane packets of a determined packet session-instance to the automatically selected network probe.
2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the packet flow switch includes a protocol identifier for automatically identifying the communication protocol of the received packet.
3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the at least one network probe includes a control plane cache for storing control plane packets of active session-instances, the control plane cache of each of the plurality of network probes storing the control plane packets of all session-instances.
4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the load balancer is configured to identify a session-instance identifier of the user plane packet using a value in a payload portion of the packet.
5. The system of claim 4 , wherein the value is a GTP field in the user plane packet.
6. The system of claim 4 , wherein the session-instance identifier is determined by using a value in a payload portion of the packet at a fixed number of bits from a first end of a header portion of the packet.
7. The system of claim 1 , wherein the session-instance identifier is a variable number of bits from a first end of a header portion of the packet.
8. The system of claim 2 , wherein the communication protocol of a received packet is identified contingent upon the received packet only being determined to be a user plane packet.
9. The system of claim 1 , wherein the packet session-instance is determined by scanning for presence of an identifying pattern at an variable bit location in the payload of the received packet.
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February 26, 2018
April 28, 2020
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